A comprehensive
description of waste and waste-related legislation, policies and instruments is
set out in the Country
Fact Sheet for Finland on the website of the European Topic Centre on
Sustainable Consumption and Production. The national objectives, in line with EU
policies and other international activities, aim to prevent the generation of
waste, contribute to the reuse of waste and reduce the adverse effects of waste
management. Finnish legislation also covers some issues not yet addressed by EU
legislation and, in some cases, the limits and standards are stricter than
those applied in the EU are.

The main
objectives of the National Waste Plan for 2016 are as follows:

Finland’s waste policy specifically aims to prevent
waste and reduce its negative effects on human health and the environment. To
meet this objective it is important to:

• prevent
the generation of waste

• promote the
reuse of waste

• promote the
biological recovery of waste and the recycling of materials

• promote the
use of waste unsuitable for recycling as energy

• ensure
that the treatment and disposal of waste does not cause harmful impacts.

Waste management goals and the policy instruments
required to achieve these goals come under eight categories:

1.
Increasing waste prevention by promoting material efficiency

2.
Increasing recycling

3. Promoting
the management of hazardous substances in the context of waste

One of the main targets is to maintain the volume of
municipal solid waste at the 2000 level and then achieve a decrease by 2016.
Another target is to recycle 50 % of municipal waste, obtaining energy
from 30 % and ensuring that no more than 20 % are disposed in landfills.

• to recover
materials or energy from 70 % of all construction and demolition waste

• to replace
5 % of the natural gravel and crushed rocks used in construction and other
activities with industrial and/or mining waste

• to recover
100 % of municipal sewage.

The plan suggests
that industrial sectors should negotiate sector-specific agreements to promote
material efficiency and that these agreements should set targets for waste
prevention and recycling.

The National Waste Plan includes a separate
national waste prevention programme.

A monitoring
programme will be established to assess the implementation and impacts of the national
plan. The programme will provide a list of indicators and steering instruments
and the monitoring will mainly be based on waste sector statistics compiled by
Statistics Finland. An interim report based on the monitoring programme will be
published in 2010 and 2013.

In addition to the
National Plan, most of the former 13 regional environmental centres had local waste
plans. On 1 January 2010, the regional environmental centres merged with employment
and economic centres, road districts, regional environmental centres and state provincial
offices to form 15 Centres for Economic
Development, Transport and the Environment. These new centres will now
administer local waste plans.

Waste sector legislation is due to be revised in full and
proposals are expected to be ready in September 2010[1].

Much of Finland’s waste
legislation can be accessed in Finlex, the database of Finnish legislation (http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki) using the
search word ‘waste’.